


we want to live by each other's happiness

by philthestone



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Gen, i hope everyone has a nice day devoid of all antisemitism and other forms of prejudice, literally -- the gang is ALL here. the most MINOR of characters. are here, nick spencer raised me hydra cap and so i raised nick spencer explicitly jewish captain america, the gang's all here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 02:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7917034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erskine tilts his head.</p><p>“Why do you want to fight?”</p><p>Jake could say a million things.</p><p>“I’m Jewish.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	we want to live by each other's happiness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weaslayyy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaslayyy/gifts).



> this idea was originally created because maya (@weaslayyy here on ao3; @mayabazaar on tumblr) and I were very, very upset that nick spencer had the audacity to tell us that steve rogers was a nazi all along. not only was it a discredit to EVERYTHING steve has EVER stood for, it was bordering on blatantly antisemetic considering the origins of the character of cap (created by two jewish men to punch hitler, in a time when america was very pro-nazi and to great personal risk), and spencer's condescending response to the backlash. i think the original idea -- the, "oh my God, we have to make cap jewish" -- was maya's, but it became my baby because I was the one who basically said, OH MY GOD, MY TIME HAS COME. being jewish, i felt a lot closer to the concept of a jewish cap than i had to most other marvel concepts discussed, and ... who better to be my jewish captain america than jake peralta?
> 
> reviews are sunshine and light and i truly hope you all enjoy this fic <3

Perhaps it would be prudent to say that there are certain situations that inherently demand such short answers that do not, really, convey the true complexity of an issue. Indeed, human nature itself demands simplicity: black and white, good and evil, yes and no. However complicated the world might _actually_ be, to delve into the the intricacy of anything – from why Mrs. Lewenski next door has a peculiar obsession with plums, to the moral questions of _right_ versus _wrong_ or, even, why Jake Peralta’s mother thinks to herself in the relative safety of her lumpy mattress that one day, her son might possibly get himself hurt trying to realize his constant and persistent need to protect people _starting with_ her – well, to dive into _anything_ would not be conducive to the eloquence or comedy or dramatic impact for which stories are written.

Jake sits on the plastic-covered cot of the medical room. If his mother were there to ask him exactly how he was feeling at that particular moment, he would tell her that he feels as though he can take on the world in a fist fight and win. If Rosa were to ask the same thing, he’d say that his heart is trapped in his throat.

A terrible sentiment, really, but then – oh. Dr. Erskine is asking him a question. His eyes are kind, Jake notices, but a voice that sounds suspiciously like Rosa’s tells him that now isn’t really the time to notice such things.

Erskine tilts his head.

“Why do you want to fight?”

Jake could say a million things.

“I’m Jewish.”

//

“This,” says Rosa. “This is it. This is the last time. This is – Christ, Jake. Moses. _Abraham_.”

“Okay,” says Jake. “But you should see the other guy.”

“ _Completely unharmed and without his sad sack best friend having to give him stitches in his kitchen_.”

“Okay,” says Jake again. “Okay, listen, Rosa –”

Rosa folds her arms over her chest and glares, which is not unusual in and of itself, but is time consuming and unfortunate, because Jake’s mother should be arriving home from work some time within the next ten minutes if their sometimes-accurate clock on the wall is right. And, keeping to the time-honoured tradition of most mothers everywhere, likely won’t react positively to her son being given stitches via her piecemeal sewing kit by his down-the-street neighbor who may have a glare that can blister the peeling paint on the walls but doesn’t have particularly steady hands.

The clock on the wall ticks, sadly. Or at least, Jake thinks that it sounds pretty sad, because most everything about today has been pretty sad, but that could be his overactive imagination. Or the asthma medication, which, _damn_ , he forgot to take again and Rosa’s gonna be _pissed_ if she finds out.

Slowly, reluctantly (she’s not reluctant, not really, Jake’s pretty sure that he’d follow Rosa Diaz to the ends of Long Island and she’d probably do the same for him) Rosa grabs a stubborn, coarse coil of her dark hair and fits it back into its tie at the back of her head, and then picks up the needle again.

Jake makes a face. “Sorry.”

“What’d he do?”

“Kicked Mrs. Lewenski’s dog.”

“ _Je -_ -”

“And also he kept saying how Marcus should be feeding out of a pig pen and spat at Mrs. Judy while she carried her laundry down Fulton –”

Rosa’s scowl is possibly three times as pronounced when Jake yelps slightly, the needle accidentally pricking a spot _not_ numbed by the bucketful of ice periodically refilled from the icebox. It’s possibly three times as pronounced and Jake feels as though Rosa is physically restraining herself from biting out, _Was he drunk?_ Which – well, God, okay, yes, he was.

“Rosa,” says Jake.

Rosa says nothing.

“Rosa,” says Jake again.

Rosa continues to remain silent; her tongue has poked out between her teeth in concentration. Jake can see the groove of scarred skin in her eyebrow and the freckle underneath her eye.

“Rosa,” says Jake, a third time.

“I enlisted,” Rosa blurts, her eyes sliding shut. And – oh. _Oh_.

Jake swallows.

“Oh,” he says.

She straightens, and for the first time since dragging him with his bleeding forehead and puffed-up lip from the back-alley in Fulton back up to the apartment, she smiles. It’s the sort of smile that screams youthful heroism and invincibility that you don’t really stop to think about and maybe Jake is a little bit in awe, even if he does know Rosa better than most ninety percent of the human population of Earth could ever claim.

(Her _abuela_ is the exception, though Jake’s never met the woman and is assuming this based on Rosa’s word alone.

Momentarily, he has the terrible thought that perhaps Rosa will go and be Rosa in France and there’ll be one more person added to the ten percent portion that know her as well as him – perhaps, he thinks, _perhaps_ even better.

But he doesn’t like to think about it, so it’s only momentary, and then it’s gone and he’s grinning at her like he doesn’t wish he was going with her and like she quite possibly hung the moon.)

“Yeah,” she says. “I. Wow. Yeah.”

“Holy Moses,” Jake says, and her grin grows, a colouring of something less _bravado_ and more _sincerity_ lighting it up sunny yellow in the terrible apartment lighting. There’s a bit of his blood staining her fingers and that damn twist of hair has fallen back out of its tie and Jake feels his grin grow; they’ve been talking about this for so long, too long, almost a fantasy or pipe dream now than a commitment to make to one’s country.

( _Ha._ )

Her grin grows and neither of them talk about the fact that Jake has been rejected three times already and then Rosa says,

“As a nurse. I’m shipping out to be a field nurse.” And Jake can detect the hint of bitterness in her voice because, well, he _can_.

It’s the sort of thing that’s terribly unfair on principle, but that can’t be fought with anything but solidarity or perhaps a sarcastic sort of defiance among one’s peers. It’s not like they’re fourteen again, Jake nearly dying of the whooping cough and it’s serious enough that Rosa can disguise herself as a boy to get a second job at the docks to help Karen pay for the medicine, either; Jake’s pretty sure that the army can court martial you for that type of deception in a way that McGinley’s shipyard can’t.

So he says, “You’re gonna do great, Rosa. You’re gonna save so many people,” and he wishes once more, desperately and a little longer than only momentarily, that he was going with her.

“I ship out on Wednesday,” says Rosa, in way of answer. The clock on the wall ticks: a quarter past midnight, and Jake reaches over impulsively and hugs her. Her shoulders stiffen under his arms for a moment, but then her arms tighten around his back and Jake feels her dig her fingers into the material of his shirt. She smells like sweat and old shoe polish and the cotton from the factory and Jake ignores the throbbing sensation growing over his eyebrow and squeezes his eyes shut.

//

Agent Santiago is exactly one inch shorter than him on heels, favors red lipstick, speaks with a Jersey accent and punches Private Pembroke in the nose within five minutes of introducing herself.

Jake wants to say that she takes his breath away, but maybe that’s also all of the physical exercise he’s being made to do.

On the first day, she introduces herself as _Agent_ and barks orders at them in a voice melodic, softer than Colonel Holt’s clipped, articulate words but injected with drive and purpose. Her back is ramrod straight and her hair perfectly coiffed and she wears chunky combat boots, and when Pembroke has the gall to say, “All due respect ma’am, but I don’t take orders from some two-bit Mexican in a stolen uniform. Why don’t you go back where you came from?” she pivots on her heel, clenches her fist and plants her knuckles directly into his nose.

“I’m Cuban, soldier. Now get up off your ass and pay attention.”

It spouts blood. Pembroke nearly chokes out a whimper. Jake has to bite down on the inside of his cheek not to smile, because he has the feeling Colonel Holt is watching him, and despite Holt’s persistent lack of expression and taciturn eyebrow raises, Jake feels a small thrill in his stomach whenever Holt’s nod of approval is given.

(Not that it’s given very often, if at all; Holt doesn’t appreciate any of Jake’s blithe comments, for some reason, and Jake cannot boast of ever having been able to actually complete a pull-up once in his life.)

Training is hard, harder than Jake wants to admit. His arms and thighs are always aching and more than once, he genuinely has had difficulty breathing, and all he wants to do when Pembroke kicks the barbed wire fence down over his head is to let his arms collapse under him and lie there forever, immobile. Except.

( _Except._ )

Nana’s sitting in the kitchen and telling him that, did he know, his great-grandfather was run out of his house and home with nothing more than the hat on his head and the prayer shawl under his clothes. All the way to America, and Jake sits at the table and listens, his dinner growing cold in front of him. Nana’s voice is warm and rich with years of keeping her family together and lighting candles for the dinner table, and she pats his arm and tells stories.

( _Except_.)

Jake’s mother gets a job at the factory in Williamsburg and comes home each night looking as though it’s taking every last ounce of her energy to smile and hug him _hello_ , looking like her bones are crying out with fatigue. Her dark hair slips out of its wrapping and her fingers, like Rosa’s eventually become, are pricked and bleeding.

( _Except._ )

The newsreels are big and loud and sometimes Bernice Kirby from down the street will tell him that they scare her, but Rosa slings her arm around his shoulder and tells him that one day, she’s going to plant her fist in Hitler’s jaw.

 _See how he likes it_.

Her parents are dead and she still carries her mother’s rosary around her neck all the time, but she comes with them to the synagogue in Flatbush, sometimes, and sits beside Jake and whispers her father’s name under her breath before and after each prayer.

( _Except._ )

He thinks of the flag as a puzzle to solve, like the ones in the newspapers he’d deliver, or the backs of the comic books he and Rosa would save quarters to buy. His chest is heaving and he’s forcing his feet not to drag, and he looks at the pole; two pegs, one perpendicular, one vertical. Somehow the Lieutenant’s voice fades to background noise. His fingers come away from the nail stained orange with rust, but the _woosh_ of the flagpole and the vibrations under his feet when it hits the ground –

Well, perhaps _it’s worth it_ applies more to riding in the car back to base with Agent Santiago, who appears to be biting back a smile much the same way that Jake did when Pembroke’s nose turned into a sputtering fountain. The back of her hair is wonderfully shiny in the afternoon sun, and Jake lets himself grin slightly, crookedly, when car starts to move.

///

A reason:

Rosa has a habit of punching Jake’s shoulder to show affection. Jake’s not sure how it came to be, but they’ve known each other long enough that it doesn’t really matter anymore. Jake hugs people; Rosa punches shoulders.

She compromises, for him, at times. She’ll sling her arm around his shoulders when they meet up together to walk back home from school, or work, or anything. Two centimeters taller than him _if_ you stretched it, and neither of them really care enough to do so. Rosa’s fingers have started bleeding and callousing because Karen convinced her boss to give Rosa a job sewing shirtwaists, too, and Jake’s hair has gotten too long because he doesn’t make enough selling newspapers to go to a proper barber.

(The last time Karen cut it, Nana declared disaster and _a chorbn_ and shook her head for the next three days straight. Rosa just laughed, though maybe she had good reason; Mrs. Lewenski’s dog Gordy kept yapping at Jake all the way down the hall, whether out of suspicion or fear, neither of them could know.

“ _Fear_ ,” barked Rosa. “You! _Ha._ ”)

There’s a sort of desperation that they’ve come to know, wriggling its way under their every move with each new piece of news they get from overseas. Last year, it was a notice of MIA for Roger Peralta. Nobody said anything about the twelve years of action he’d been missing before that, simmering complicated and bitter under the shock of the residents of the small Brooklyn apartment.

Karen had wept. Jake had picked at a scab on his knee until it had bled, and then gone out and enlisted – it was his birthday, after all.

He was rejected, for a first time. Declared not fit for duty and bundled back out into the cold, and one of the men entering to enlist had curled a lip at him – at his short stature and skinny arms or his brown curls and full lips, Jake wasn’t sure. The wind was sharp and bit through his clothes and maybe that was the sting he felt, more than anything. Nana came over that night with _rugelach_ that she’d coaxed out of Mrs. Lewenski – _sugar is scarce_ , everyone recites all the time, and sometimes Jake wants to go fight the Nazis just for that – and said her prayers before bed.

“God,” she’d said, like Jake had heard her say a million times before. “Keep an eye out on my family – on Karen, and on Jacob, and on our Rosa, and maybe give Mrs. Lewenski the generosity to share her _rugelach_ with us more.

“And _fistful_ by fistful, take these Germans from the face of the Earth.”

(It is enough, Jake thinks, to seep if only a little into his own bones; the sharpness with which the old lady speaks, the fire that sparks in her voice that Jake comes to know is reserved for only a few select things: “these Germans”, Paolo Kennikey at the newspaper on Flatbush, and once, when she didn’t think Jake was listening behind the door, Jake’s father.

Karen only shushes her mother when she goes after Paolo Kennikey, which quite possibly might mean something; Jake’s not sure he really wants to think about it.)

///

Sitting in the back of a car with Agent Santiago seems to be becoming a trend, of sorts. If Rosa were here ( _she’s not_ , _she doesn’t even know that Jake finally managed to enlist_ ) she’d laugh – her slightly-nasal, drawn out _ha_ that Jake feels is almost as integral a part of his life as his asthma medication or the smell of Nana’s bread, or even Gordy’s high-pitched yapping. The car travels through Brooklyn’s streets and Jake digs his fingertips into the plush seating of the backseat; he wonders if his mother managed to get the job at the hospital, or if she and Nana have been eating dinner with Mrs. Lewenski now that both he and Rosa are gone.

“I got beat up in that alley,” he tells Agent Santiago, pointing. “And behind that cinema.”

She looks amused, more than anything; he almost expects her to make a comment about how unsurprised she is, or to ignore him altogether. She’s started doing that, lately, because Jake doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut and sometimes the need to ask her why all of the mission reports on her makeshift desk have to be just _so_ perfectly aligned. He tells himself and Dr. Erskine that it is a completely valid question, paper is just _naturally_ going to be messed by the wind and _everyone_ knows that. He knows that was Nana here, she’d say “rubbish” and accuse him of delighting at the particular way Agent Santiago’s delicate features scrunch into a frown.

(She would not be wholly wrong, but Jake doesn’t think about that.)

But no – there is a shine to Santiago’s eyes and a curl to her lips that portrays a soft type of reluctant amusement that he doesn’t remember seeing from her before.

For some reason, her shining eyes help ease the slight tremble of his hands, and he pulls them out from under his legs to rest easily on the car seat. His legs refuse to stop jiggling, though, and he bites down on his lip to stop himself from saying anything else because he doesn’t think that she’ll tolerate the leg-jiggling much longer and he doesn’t want to push it, amusement or not.

And then, out of the blue, she says,

“When I was younger my brother Luis was always pulling me out of fights.”

Jake gapes at her. Her hair is in a perfect updo again, not a single strand out of place. The soft light from the grey sky outside highlights the impeccable curve of her lipstick. Her hands are clasped in her lap, ankles crossed, back straight, suit pressed. What he’s come to realize about Agent Santiago is that she possesses the defiant sort of stiffness that speaks of a person – a woman – not used to being respected. Or perhaps, not used to being respected without putting up a fight.

Jake thinks that he can’t possibly comprehend why someone would be foolish or blind enough _not_ to respect her.

(Also, apparently she has _brothers_.)

And yet – more and more – underneath that stiffness that she and Colonel Holt share, there’s a curl of secretive comradery to her lips each time she thinks he doesn’t see her looking, as though _they’re_ sharing something, too.

(Perhaps he can attribute his shortness of breath to this, along with the physical activity and the ever-present, meticulous swipe of her bright lipstick.)

“Wow,” says Jake, surprising himself when his voice _doesn’t_ come out strangled. “Wow. That’s. Sure. Wow.”

“Mostly,” says Agent Santiago (she’s not quite meeting his eye, which is odd and yet wholly understandable in a way Jake can’t quite articulate), “with the neighborhood boys. And one time with Mrs. Alvarez’s mangy old cat.”

Jake swallows and nods. His legs have taken a mind of their own, at this point, and are practically bouncing, enough for Agent Santiago to notice – there’s a downwards flick of her eyes and an infinitesimal raising of her eyebrow, but then, _oh_ , her lips are curving into a smile again.

“Is that why you joined the army?”

“Because I – you’re asking if I joined the army because got into fights with an old cat?”

“No,” says Jake. _Dammit, Peralta_. “No, um, I – I mean, the fights thing – I mean, like, like me – I mean I bet, Agent, ma’am – I’m still supposed to call you ma’am, right –”

“Oh, I – well – I don’t –”

“I meant with the neighborhood boys. What’d they do? To provoke you, I mean.”

(They pass by another alleyway that Jake recognizes out of the corner of his eye.)

“It’s –” Agent Santiago’s shoulders look as though they’re tightening underneath her jacket. “I’m sure you’ve noticed the colour of my skin, Mister Peralta.”

Jake blinks.

“Right. Oh. Right, oh, sorry I – I mean, I thought maybe because you were a girl –”

Agent Santiago laughs, and it’s clear and bright but Jake’s not really used to Agent Santiago laughing (it does things to his chest, but maybe that’s just the asthma and the fact that he’s on his way to be experimented on like some kind of lab rat and it’s all a little terrifying and that’s why his legs have turned into a tap-dancing routine) – so he backtracks.

“I mean, woman! Agent – ma’am – a woman, you’re –”

“I didn’t _used_ to be a woman,” says Agent Santiago. “I used to be a girl.”

“Right,” says Jake. “Sure. Of course.”

“You’re not going to ask why a pretty girl like me joined the army?”

(If his throat were a little less dry, he’d have noticed the clenching of her hands in her lap and the tinting of her cheeks and the way her words are very very slightly rushed; the way her eyes flick away immediately after she says it, widening fractionally as though to reprimand herself for blurting out something so ridiculous.)

(In a car, no less.)

(But Jake’s throat _is_ exceptionally dry, and his legs are still bouncing, so. All things considered, as they say.)

“I already asked that,” says Jake. “Wait, not the pretty part. I mean, you _are_ pretty, but that’s – or no, wait I never said – well I _did_ , just now, but –”

“No, sorry,” she says, “that’s my – I never should have – that was a bit too much on my part –”

“No, no that’s fine – good, fine, great, Agent – ma’am –”

“Just a joke, really – I was trying to make a joke –”

“Right! Yes, I, I got. It. I got the joke. Even though you are – I mean, it’s true, it’s a true joke – but you’re also brilliant, I mean I’ve seen – you probably worked really hard –”

“Mister Peralta.”

“Right,” Jake says. (This time, his voice does come out vaguely strangled; Rosa would _definitely_ laugh.)

“No, I mean –” And there’s that amused look again “– we’re here.”

Jake thinks quite suddenly, through swirling thoughts of despair at his own miserable grasp of the English language and the general ability to articulate oneself, that he would very much have liked to be friends with the young version of Amy Santiago – quite possibly scrappy and planting her tiny fists in the jaws of rude little boys. In a way, she reminds him of Rosa, and there’s a pang of something in his chest that once again ( _damn_ it), he’s unable to articulate.

He’s never been very good with words.

“I bet you had an amazing right hook as a kid,” he says, for lack of anything better to say because they _are_ here and he’s not sure – he isn’t sure if the universe isn’t about to shift, just a little.

She blinks: once, twice. Something about the stiffness changes. Maybe she’s leaning forward.

“I think we would’ve made a good team.”

“Agent Santiago, you’d have saved me from _so_ many black eyes,” Jake tells her, completely seriously.

She laughs, and it’s bright and clear once more, sort of like that realization Jake had, that her friendship would be something indescribably precious.

“Amy,” she tells him. “If we’d have been partners as kids, you’d have called me Amy.”

Jake grins, and gets out of the car to tango with his destiny.

 _Always spinning stories, this one,_ Nana used to say with Jake’s smile on her lips. _Stop being so dramatic,_ bubeleh.

(Perhaps it’s fitting that Amy is there from before the beginning of it all.)

//

A reason:

Jake and Rosa save pennies for the cinema.

Pennies that turn into quarters that get them admission tickets once in a blue moon, because medicine in the dead cold of the East Coast winter is more important than some black and white images flitting across a screen. It’s Rosa’s birthday, months before Roger is declared missing, and they watch the newsreels before _The Great Dictator_ starts, and then Jake spends three hours in the comfort of the theater seats laughing until he cries. Maybe it’s the newsreels, or the film, or a combination of both; they walk home arm in arm, elated in the July warmth and crowing about copper-gold dreams of enlisting and saving the world.

“You’ll lead a whole platoon,” Jake tells Rosa, kicking at the cans lining the docks as they make their way back home in the dwindling twilight. “And I can be your right hand man.”

“Captain Diaz,” says Rosa, grinning. “Nice.”

(The Stark expo that year has flashing lights and glimmering colours and the fantastical painting the skies and floors, and a woman named Gina Linetti tosses her hair and presents her newest inventions on stage. Jake can see Rosa’s eyes narrow, like maybe she has a chance, too.

Like maybe the dream can come out of the pipe.)

“It’s propaganda,” says Karen – late, later, after Jake’s finished telling her every detail of the little barber and the daffodils and the ridiculous floating globe. “Not the film, the – the newsreels. Every time you go they fill your heads with dangerous thoughts.”

“People are _dying_ , Ma,” says Jake. It comes out only partially sharpened, like someone gave up whittling halfway through; there are lines around his mother’s eyes that he’s noticed every day since he turned fifteen, but they seem all that much more defined, now.

( _Our_ people.)

She is the strongest person Jake has ever met, and she looks to be at the brink of defeat.

“I know,” she says, fingers digging into the sodden laundry that she’s spreading over the kitchen table. “I _know_. You can’t save the world, _bubeleh_. You know you can’t.”

Jake swallows against the sudden _whoosh_ in his chest, as though his heart and lungs have dropped down to the pit of his stomach, and frowns at the table. His fingers pick at the grain of the wood and he thinks about how he nearly lost his job two days previous, because he couldn’t carry the three loaded bags of paper around four blocks fast enough.

Finally, his shoulders sagging and his frame sinking into a chair across from his mother: “I know.”

He feels her move around the table rather than sees her. Her fingers brush against the hair curling on his forehead and her lips press gently in their wake. He looks up when her hands come to hold his face, calloused fingers pressing against his temples. Jake smiles up at her, lopsided and tired, and his mother sighs again, shaking her head.

“You know,” she says, quiet and rough with an emotion that he can’t quite identify. “I think you’ve gotten so good at protecting me that you think it’s up to you to protect everyone else, too.”

“Ma, you know you’re tougher than both of –”

“I’m very well aware, Jacob.” Her mouth has curled upwards into a smile that reminds him of Nana whenever she’s about to make a joke.

On impulse, he leans forward and hugs her, arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders as she bends down to press his forehead against her collarbone and hug him back. She is the strength of years of hard work and emotional burden wrapped in the warmth of the soup she makes so well, and she hugs him back, fiercely.

“I’m sorry,” Jake tells her, whispered into her cotton shirt.

“I love you,” says Karen, sinking down into the chair beside him, still with her arms wrapped around her son. Jake squeezes his eyes shut and feels the frame of her glasses against his cheek; it feels like home.

“Love you too, Ma.”

(It would help, Karen tells him a little while later, if he did the dishes that night, and sorted through the laundry. _Save my back first, and then consider the world._

Jake grins at her over the soapy dishes, and his mother’s eyes twinkle behind her glasses as she sits at the table mending old shirts.)

///

He’s never been particularly good at drawing.

Jake’s not sure why he started doing it. It was a good way to distract himself, he supposes, when he needed to be distracted – from the world, from the overwhelming nature of his thoughts, from his mother’s tired frame or Nana’s cough or how Rosa had taken to wearing her mother’s old rosary around her neck. His fingers used to shake, before, when he held his pencil, but now they’re a lot steadier; _he’s_ a lot –

Well, he should be. He _should_ be a lot steadier, but even now it feels paradoxical that the new weight of his limbs sometimes still trips him up and feels awkward, like he’s stuck in someone else’s skin. It’s a blessing wrapped inside a smothering blanket of confusion. It’s been three months and he feels like there’s something important that he’s been made to leave behind, and it _hurts_.

It’s a different kind of hurt – one that Jake’s not familiar with.

He remembers Nana lighting the candles at the table and the ache in his chest, which he can now no longer blame on the asthma, grows.

 _You must promise me one thing. That you will stay_ who you are.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Amy – she is _Amy_ now, has been for some time – stands at the edge of the tent, her usually immaculately-done hair wisping slightly around her face in the humidity. It’s cold, a sort of wet cold that bites into people’s bones, but for once Jake doesn’t feel it eat into his skin and immobilize him. He lets his hands curl over his knees and doesn’t meet her eye. He can see her rocking slightly on her feet in his periphery, unsure of how to proceed.

“I like the costume,” she says presently. “It’s – patriotic.”

Jake swallows; only his mother’s constant lectures on politeness force the, “Thanks,” out of his mouth, but the words leave behind a sour taste that Jake can’t quite identify. _Patriotic_. If Rosa was here, she’d outright scoff.

The mask covers his hair and nose and cheekbones in a way that worms its way into his chest and eats at his ribs. He’s always loved red and blue, the colours bright and cheerful and something standing out against the neutral cottons of the worn shirts stuffed in their drawer. _But_ – they treat him like something they need to flaunt and hide at once: the Jake who goes up on stage and sings is him, but not all of him. More than anything, Erskine had promised him that the purpose of the operation was to magnify what was already in a person – not to change him.

The guilt rises in his throat. It is not his fault, but _is_. He is helpless, but complicit. He could get up and say _no_ , and yet there is a part of him desperate to be doing _something_ that cannot bring himself to abandon anything.

(“I could say something,” he’d said at the beginning, excited and breathless, still getting used to his new body. “Like, a speech, or some words about how I’m related to everything going on overseas –”

“What?” Senator Podolski’s cigar smoke blew into Jake’s face when he spoke. “Nah, kid, people don’t see talkin’ heads as inspirational –”

“No,” Jake had said, swallowing, hands grabbing at the thighs of his costume. “No, I mean – I, I – I’ve got family, out there, in – in the camps –”

“Ah, Jesus.” He looked sympathetic, he really had, but a puffed-out laugh followed his words, coming like a punch to the gut and knocking all of the air out of Jake’s chest, worst than any asthma attack he’d ever suffered through. “That’s – listen, Peralta. Captain America can’t be – just, keep your head down and sing the lines, right? I’m sorry about the – about everything. I’m sorry, kid. It just doesn’t work that way.”)

The notebook is lying on the stoop beside him, forgotten; he sees Amy move forward out of the corner of his eye, but he keeps his gaze on his hands, frowning. He can hear the sound of the rain pattering on the canvas of the tent above them, dismal and pathetic, turning the ground to sludge.

“He looks nice.” He looks up to see her looking curiously at the paper, her fingers tracing the lopsided pencil shapes on the page. Hesitant, but with a tang of genuine interest that something inside Jake immediately clings to. “I like his paint bucket. And mustache.” There’s a slight quirk to her lips when she looks up and holds his gaze, slivers of sincere friendliness binding and twisting the sympathy that she carries in her words.

Jake bites on his lower lip and turns the pencil in his fingers, shrugging. “He’s … a friend of mine.”

(He wonders if his mother will still be able to reach down and hold his face like she used to, or if he’s too tall, now.

She’d smile at him, Jake thinks. She’d grin like they were sharing a joke together, like she’d done so many many times before around Nana’s shoulders ever since he was as tall as her knees, and she’d wink and wipe her hands on her skirt and _be there_ , in a way that he is not, right now, for her. He’s _left_ , and he can’t help but wonder – _for what?_ )

Amy takes a breath beside him, and then, she sits. He legs are crossed at the ankles, the soles of her combat boots muddied.

She inhales: once, large and long, the breath sounding deliberate – as though the wet air is sticking to her throat as it goes.

“You’re worth more than this, you know. You can do better things.”

Jake laughs, short and hollow. “Can I?”

“ _Yes_.” Her voice cuts through the dim sound of the rain and the cold humidity, forcing him to look up at her. Amy’s eyes are bright, fierce; there’s defiance in them that he’d recognized from the moment he met her, that nearly-desperate, poorly-hidden determination that characterized the underpinnings of her every move. He has never had the privilege of seeing flash white-hot in the open.

Until now.

He thinks of the nearly imperceptible sigh Colonel Holt had given the last time Jake saw him, across a dressing table and a crowd of good-hearted showgirls and questionable businessmen.

“Agent San –”

“You _can_ , Jake. It’s your own choice.”

“It’s not,” he says, hands curling into fists against his knees against his will. “Don’t you get it, it doesn’t work like that, it’s _not_ my –”

“I managed, didn’t I?”

Sharp and clear. The sudden realization that there’s an understanding sometimes spinning between people who have only just met (five months, to be exact) bubbles up in Jake’s throat; a parallelism in experiences that is universal in those falling under the many insidious layers of _inferior_ that stack atop each other unbidden and force individuals to carry weights that they cannot always articulate. He turns to look at her and there is a brilliant selflessness in Amy Santiago’s eyes that seems to defy the dreary gloom of the bleary French weather.

And then, contrasting in its softness: her hand comes up to touch his bicep. He feels something in his chest deflate.

“It’s – I feel like it’d be even worse if they’d – they’d _used_ it, you know?”

She’s quiet, her eyes trained on the canvas tent in front of them. Her fingers press ever so slightly into his arm, through the leather of his jacket, and he’s not sure if it’s the touch – the gentle human contact that is so subtle and personal all at once – or the fact that she is silent, almost waiting for him to continue, that urges him to keep talking.

“I wanted them to –I _want_ – but it’s. It’s just, they’d be using it. Like it’s not me, it’s _theirs_ , it’s something they can parade around and not why people are _dying_ –”

“I’m sorry,” she says, quietly.

Jake swallows. It’s difficult, painful, his throat working around the tightness that has suddenly grown at the juncture of his collarbone. He feels just as he did struggling through dictation in primary school, just as he did getting reprimanded for dropping the sack of newspapers in the snow the previous winter after his foot caught on the icy sidewalk and he could not keep his balance. Just as he did each time someone spoke of their father with warmth and admiration, each time he had to watch his mother count quarters on the kitchen table with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

“It’s not your fault,” he whispers.

They’re both quiet for several long, extended moments, listening to the rain patter down on the tarp above them. He can see Amy’s fingers trace the messy lines on the notebook page once more, her mouth pulled down into a frown that seems to fit her face perfectly. Here, with her hair whisping in the humidity and her boots muddied and her hand resting gently on his arm, she carries very little of the unwavering professionalism and eagerness that is so evident in every other waking moment spent in her presence. Not the bark of the commanding officer initiating new recruits, nor the audacity of the woman standing in the middle of a street firing cartridges head-on into the windshield of an oncoming car. The brilliance of the code-breaker and the professionalism of the federal agent has been put on the backburner.

She’s almost – _soft_.

“It’s not your fault, either.” Her voice is quiet, more so than it was before, but strong and stable. “You’re worth more than this,” she repeats, and her hand has shifted now to grip his bicep. “You _are_. It’s not your fault, but it is your choice.”

(He wonders, momentarily, like a light flashing through his whole, unfamiliar body, if Nana would have liked Amy Santiago.)

She gets up, her hand falling to her side, and looks down at the sketch laying beside him. When she looks up at him, there’s a spark in her eye, again; the sort of thing that’s telling of a hint of mischief underneath the rather official offer of friendship in her small smile.

“You’re the Captain now, Jake. Don’t doubt yourself.”

Jake swallows again, ready to stand up and protest, but the words get caught in his throat.

( _Not a perfect soldier, but a good man._ )

Agent Santiago has turned and left, and he watches her walk away with her arm over her head, shielding her hair from the rain.

///

A reason:

Jake’s father leaves when he is seven years old, trailing behind him memories of a bright smile and ice cream milkshakes bought at the little pizzeria at the corner of their block. He can’t remember, after that, the next time his mother takes her beloved paints and papers out again; they’re packed away into a little box that’s put on the shelf above Jake’s bed in their new apartment, down the hall from Nana – useless now that Karen is forced to work two jobs.

Jake meets Rosa three weeks after they move: a girl with scrapes on her knees, her bushy, frizzy hair in braids that look too tight for her head and a scowl that could rival the sour-looking old lady who is their new neighbor. Jake is being shoved into the wall by some older boys for trying to protect a mangy kitten they’re trying to drown, and Rosa Diaz ascends from the heavens (the rusting fire escape above their heads, Jake learns later) to fight them off with her wild curls and accented yelling and too-large front teeth. Not to mention the splintered piece of wood she wields in her eight-year-old arms, which probably used to be a part of a fence and is likely what ultimately makes them scamper off.

It’s after she’s tugged him back up to his feet and given him a once over with her dark eyes that Jake, almost eight years old and still believing his father to be on a trip upstate to visit his sister, smiles at her through the scrape on his jaw from the brick wall. He’s wet from head to toe, having nearly fallen into the barrel full of rain intended for the kitten, his brown curls plastered to his forehead and his shirt clinging to his skinny chest. He smiles at her, wide and warm, showing off the tooth he lost only the previous week.

“I’m Jake,” Jake says, and Rosa’s frame goes very stiff, her eyes widening for perhaps a quarter of a second before she turns on her heel and walks in the opposite direction, too fast for Jake to not immediately be curious.

“No, seriously,” says Jake, scooping up the shivering kitten into his arms and ignoring its feeble scratching at the exposed skin of his arm, where his sleeve has ridden up to his elbow. He has to run to catch up with her long lanky strides, his shoes squishing and waterlogged. “That was somethin’ else! You’re kinda tough for a girl.”

Rosa stops, eyes narrowing, and whirls on him. She seems to restrain herself from actually shoving him, after taking in the sopping bundle of calico in his scrawny arms, but Jake thinks that she certainly looks like she _wants_ to.

“You don’t have to be a boy to be tough,” she tells him, and her words are accented like what Jake hears the few times he’s been to Williamsburg, a lilt that makes Jake wonder how long she’s lived in New York. Her small fists are curled.

“Oh,” says Jake. “Oh, I’m – sorry. Just, my Dad always says –”

Rosa’s started walking again.

“Wait!” Jake jogs again, ignoring the pain in his elbows and holding the silent, trembling kitten closer to his chest. “Hey, wait! You’ve gotta help me name her, I don’t –” His foot catches on the cracked sidewalk and he nearly trips, but catches himself and continues stumbling after her. “ – You saved her, and me, and, and, she needs a name! Wait up!”

Later, there might be something to be said about the irregularity in the order of things; the burst of light where two small souls burning for very different reasons perhaps more so reached out to grasp hands as they did collide, one sporting a mop and another a bush of curly hair that set them apart. Unfathomable as it is obvious that Rosa Diaz’s hard edges could not survive without Jake Peralta’s softness – and vice versa – the kitten in Jake’s arms marked a shift in their tiny little universes.

Right now, the childish sincerity in Jake’s offer of friendship flies above any analysis of the human condition at the same pace as the puffs of mist that are exiting Jake’s mouth, each breath he releases struggling to emerge between the growing chattering of his teeth. 

Very, very hesitant:

“I’m Rosa,” says Rosa.

“I’m-m-m J-j-jake,” Jake repeats. He’s still smiling, far too widely for any average child who has just been shoved into a wall, doused in icy rainwater, and is clutching scratching feline in his wimpy arms.

(Rosa cannot help but think he’s a little bit odd.)

“You’re shivering,” she tells him, and then clamps her mouth back shut again, elbows locking stiffly at her sides and looking as though she’s committed a cardinal error in friendship. You can’t just go around _telling_ people they’re _shivering_ , Jake supposes. He doesn’t really mind, though; he’d hardly even noticed.

“‘S nice t-t’m-m-meet y-you,” Jake manages, instead of acknowledging his trembling form, and Rosa blinks at him.

They stand in the middle of the sidewalk looking at each other for long enough that Mrs. Lewenski, who is across the street buying plums from a Romanian fruit seller, tuts loudly and shakes her head; Karen Peralta’s errant son is _at it again_.

(Which begs the question of how often Jake finds himself falling in barrels to rescue drowning kittens, but, then – that _is_ what keeps his mother up at night, after all.)

“ _El Babosa_ ,” says Rosa finally, her fingers skimming the hem of her skirt. “For the cat’s name. You look cold.”

Jake coughs in response. It’s loud and a little bit wheezing, but he says,

“Th-th-that’s a nice n-n-name.”

Then he coughs again. Rosa looks alarmed, grabs his arm, and drags him all the way back to her sister’s house, a cramped place filled with a wailing baby and many cloth blankets and Jake has his first experience with rapid fire exchanges in Spanish flying over his head. Rosa’s sister gives him warm milk with cinnamon, wraps him in three blankets and sends him home; Rosa doesn’t follow him, but he can see her peeking out the door, holding a now-dry El Babosa in her lanky arms so tightly that the aggrieved kitten has started to whine.

Maybe if Jake had not found her in the schoolyard the next day and refused to leave her side, dumping his scattered school supplies by hers on the adjacent desk and heedlessly and innocently offering a continuous stream of chatter that probably reveals far more about him than sensible, they would not have become friends.

But he did. And _they_ did.

(The news that the 99th infantry is officially missing in action is the second worst moment of Jake’s entire life.)

//

Jake doesn’t really plan to jump out of a flying aircraft into enemy territory without so much as a parachute. In fact, the idea is ludicrous and insane halfway to the ground, the wind whistling around him and his painted, theater prop of a shield strapped to his back. The moisture in the air is stinging his cheeks and all that he can think of the phrase, _Oh, God, Rosa’s gonna_ kill _me for this_.

Of course, many events in Jake’s life have thus-far not been planned.

Meeting Gina Linetti, for example, is one such event.

He stands behind Amy and tries not to let his hands tremble by balling them into fists, the unfamiliar terror that is crawling up his throat and coating the inside of his jaw with binding glue the only thing keeping him from chattering with nerves. Not nerves for what he is about to do, or what might happen once it’s done, but – unspoken, almost, when Amy looks at him in the Colonel’s tent after the news is unravelled, _but_ –

(“ _Try not to die while I’m gone,_ ” she’d said, with a grin and a punch to the shoulder.

“ _You, too_ ,” and _oh_ , how much weight did those words carry. “ _You, too, Rosa._ ”)

“Ladies and _gents_ ,” says the ever-vivacious woman with the gingery hair and garishly-painted lips standing before him, sporting the poise of a person with an air unmistakably _self built_. Jake sees it in the curve of her mouth, the hook of her nose, the lilt of her accent and the toss of her hair. She is a woman with all the trappings of a socialite but a crazed look in her eye that screams _mad scientist_ , and quite suddenly all Jake wants to do is ask, _Ninety-Eighth and Atlantic?_ a desperate grab for a person from _home_.

He’s seen her only once, at an expo where her eccentric inventions fell apart on-stage to the immense amusement of the audience, and yet everything about her feels utterly familiar.

Were Jake not on a _very_ tight schedule, he’d probably start up an affable conversation. _Did you know my mother_ , he’d ask, _or Mr. Horowitz down the street,_ and _how did you make it out?_

As it is, he turns, the chill of the night air cushioning his cheek, and stares incredulously at Amy.

“You _know a guy_?”

Amy frowns.

“I told you to trust me.”

“I –” says Jake, the glue tightening his jaw a source of difficulty. “I _do_ – I, I do. I do trust you.” He inhales, once, and closes his eyes, and when he looks up again he looks at Gina Linetti. She’s holding his gaze, one eyebrow raised.

Jake’s read about mad scientists in comics and magazine columns, always caricatures in stories, but he’s never had the pleasure of meeting one in real life – something that he cannot say he was exactly prepared for, especially directly on the heels of learning his best friend is missing on German soil. Gina Linetti’s styled hair is trapped under a pair of leather pilot’s goggles, a silk white scarf wrapped around her neck, with heeled leather boots donning her feet. Jake thinks briefly that walking around this muck in such wobbly footwear must be terribly impractical, but stops himself almost immediately, a voice echoing his Nana’s scolding his presumption. For all he knows, this remarkable woman has mastered wobbly shoes in much the same way as she seems to have the ability to fly cargo planes.

She leans against the doorway to the cockpit of the plane and reaches a lazy hand out in greeting, a smirk – because it _is_ a smirk, and it takes everything that Jake has not to glare – that could only be described as _knowing_ curling her lips.

“Regina,” she says, with another toss of her hair. “Linetti. I’m not sure if it’s a pleasure yet, but I gotta say I’ve been plenty curious to meet you, sugar.”

Jake presses his fists against his thighs and swallows thickly at the familiarity of her accent.

“You can fly this thing?”

“Sure I can fly, small fry. I can fly _an_ -y-thing.” She turns, having annunciated every syllable to her satisfaction. One hip cocked, she raises both eyebrows at Amy. “You up for this, Santiago? We’re breaking an awful lotta rules for your fella.”

If Amy flushes, Jake can’t tell in the post-midnight fog. He _does_ trust her, more than he probably should. When Amy had grabbed his arm and hissed, “ _I know a guy_ ,” moments after Colonel Holt’s final, “There’s nothing I can do,” uttered tight and followed swiftly by his turning away from a Jake whose world was breaking apart under his feet, Jake had not expected to be illegally commandeering an army plane and sneaking past enemy borders with Agent Amy Santiago and _Gina Linetti_ , of all people, complicit. And yet – and yet. Here he is, about to commit the highest act of insubordination he can conceive at this moment of muddled emotion, and Amy is pursing her lips and nodding with determination.

“We’re short on time, Gina,” is all she says now, familiar in her practicality such that Jake, despite the knaw in his stomach and the ache in his jaw, feels his hands loosen the barest little bit.

“Ames,” says Gina Linetti, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes. “I will fly this God-forsaken hunk of junk into the himalayas. I was just speaking the facts.”

“Please,” says Jake suddenly, surprising himself with the desperate force with which the word ejects itself from his mouth. “You don’t –”

“Captain America, huh? I almost wish I could’ve been there to see that.” Her voice drawls the name, its tone at once copper with cynicism and flashing gold with delight. The sparkle that he’ll see in her eyes when they enter the lit interior of the cargo plane is dimmed in the dark but present all the same – more a gleam than a sparkle, perhaps, and slightly manic in a way that makes Jake swallow, once more calling to mind the words _mad scientist_. But it disappears in a flash, and her face shifts in the shadows, almost as though she’s remembering something new. “But that’s not the point, I guess,” she says, tapping her fingers against her arm. “You’re here for your friend.”

“For the missing regiment,” says Jake, too quickly, maybe, holding her gaze. His lips have gone cold, whether numbed by the damp weather or devoid of blood, Jake can’t tell. He thinks that she can detect, with those gleaming eyes, the tremble in his voice.

“Nu-uh,” says Gina Linetti, another smile curling those painted lips of hers, _knowing_ once more and Jake’s lungs fill with air in a way that he’s not felt in a long time.

She _understands_.

“Please,” Jake repeats. The tremble seems to have lost some of its clout; Jake looks at Amy when the other woman breaks his gaze, looking at some point behind his shoulder. Amy looks back, standing tall beside the access ramp and pressing her lips together once more. Her hair is wisping again, and her eyes look more tired than Jake remembers them to be. And then:

“Of course,” says Gina, and suddenly she’s looking back at him, standing just a little bit straighter. She smacks her hand against the entrance to the cockpit and slings an arm around Amy’s shoulders, a grin growing whip-like across her face. “I guess it _is_ a pleasure, Captain America. Get on the plane, hun, we got an enemy territory to fly into.”

(Jake thinks that her voice is more nasal than Rosa’s is, but he can’t help but think – they’re going to get along famously.)

(He can’t afford to think any other way.)

//

A reason:

“What are you _doing_ ,” gasps Jake, utterly appalled. “That’s against the _law_!”

“Shhh, someone’ll hear!”

Douglas Judy is thirteen years old, lives on the the other side of Bed-Stuy, and already knows how to wink far better than is any good for him. He’s also stuffing a toy car inside his jacket right outside the front of Brooklyn’s finest department store, and Jake and Rosa are _witnesses_.

Which is why Doug Judy’s clamped his free hand around Jake’s mouth and is dragging him through the big double doors, Rosa’s yell catching in her throat as she runs after them, the bushes of her pigtails bouncing her her wake.

“It’s il- _legal_ ,” Jake repeats in a sort of half-furious whisper, once Judy’s hand is gone. “You can’t _do_ that!”

“ _Shhh_!” Doug Judy repeats, glancing around them. “Don’t worry about it, kid – what’d you say your name was again?”

“He didn’t,” Rosa informs him, as Jake rolls his eyes in an exaggerated manner that would make Nana tut disapprovingly and Rabbi Elliot chuckle quietly when Nana’s back is turned.

“I’m _Jake_ ,” says Jake, as though this should be obvious. “Jake Peralta. Put the toy back!”

“Jeez, shorty,” says Doug Judy. “Relax! You a copper or somethin’?”

“ _No_ , but my mother says you’re not s’posed to –”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Doug Judy, speaking over Jake in an infuriatingly chipper manner for a person who’s just _stolen_ something. (Jake, if he’s not made it especially clear, is _appalled_.)

“Don’t be mean,” snaps Rosa, ever Jake’s stalwart defender (even when she’s punching him in the arm for being a dumb dumb). “ _El peleón_ – I’ll make you put it back, that’s not yours!”

There’s a pause, a long one, the sort that makes Jake feel like they’ve been staring at each other for far too long and he should probably look away only that would make him look foolish. Finally, the older boy’s easy-going smile fades, his dimples disappearing to make room for a lopsided frown. He’s not wearing a scarf, which Jake thinks absently is odd for the middle of November.

“Listen,” he says, taking a tiny step back. “You don’t know my life. Get outta here.”

“But you _can’t_ ,” says Jake, confused. “Maybe – maybe _we_ could –”

The realization that Jake’s original thought – that if this boy wanted the toy so badly then _Jake_ would pay for it – is ridiculous hits Jake only after most of his sentence has escaped his mouth. He frowns. He’s only got a few pennies saved, as does Rosa; they’d compared pocket money only two days previous, trying to decide if they had enough for caramel creams from Mr. Horowitz’s candy store down the street. But _still_.

Jake stands up a little straighter and squares his skinny shoulders.

“Maybe if you asked the clerk nicely he’d give it to you!”

Doug Judy laughs at him.

Loudly.

“ _Hey_ ,” snaps Rosa, crossing her arms beside Jake, the single word more of a warning than any lecture from her might have been.

“Listen,” says Jake, his eyebrows still creased, even as the laughter trickles down through the thinning fabric of Jake’s own jacket, twisting his throat with his own disbelief in what he’s saying. “I was being serious! Listen, maybe he’s nice, maybe he’ll –”

“Hey!”

The three of them whirl around, the sight of the store owner – Mr. Minsk, Jake remembers – making Doug Judy freeze solid on his feet.

Jake sees Judy’s face fall and wishes the sidewalk could open up and swallow all three of them whole. Or, preferably, Mr. Minsk whole, the memory of Jake’s mother immediately dropping Jake’s hand to help a young woman whose basket of laundry had been knocked over by a remorseless Minsk as he crossed the street across from their apartment still fresh in Jake’s mind.

Jake quells the urge to reach back and grab Rosa’s hand – something that he’s sure Rosa would most definitely _not_ appreciate – and remembers what his mother told him after Mrs. Schillens had left their house with a fresh piece of bread and her laundry neatly folded and back in order. He squares his shoulders and plasters a smile onto his face, once more showing off his missing teeth.

“Mr. Minsk!” says Jake, stepping forward. “Listen, we were just –”

“Get away from my store, boy,” snaps Mr. Minsk; he’s ignoring Jake completely, beady eyes narrowed at Doug Judy. “You blind or something? Didn’t read the sign on the door? You aren’t allowed here.”

“S-sorry,” stammers Judy, his hands curling into fists as he hastily shoves them into his pockets. “I just wanted –”

“What, your mama never taught you any manners? You call me _sir_ , boy, now get out before I call the police! I’ll bet you’ve stolen something, too –”

(“You gave her a perfectly good loaf of bread! Who cares, Karen, you can’t go around helping every –”

“She was unfairly treated and she needed a friend,” Jake hears his mother say, as he crouches, hidden and with his knees drawn up to his chest, behind the door to the bedroom. “It’s not like _we’re_ strangers to this, Roger, you think they don’t have it worst? If I ignored her –”

“If you ignored her we’d have _bread_ ,” says Jake’s father, rolling his eyes. “That’s just the way the world is, Karen.”

“It shouldn’t be,” snaps Karen Peralta, a very slight tremble creeping in under her firm voice, so small that six-year-old Jake does not recognize it. “I shouldn’t be refused jobs because of some cockamamy notion that my people can’t be trusted and Jane Schillens should not be shoved onto the floor because of the colour of her skin! Don’t you dare tell me that’s how the world works, Roger Peralta, don’t you dare!”

“Karen –”

“You treat _everyone_ with kindness, alright, it is hard enough for people out there for me to contribute to their hardships by being selfish about a damned loaf of _challah_!”)

There is a split second – a moment – the sort that are not, particularly, in the category of life changing events. But they _are_ important, and in that important moment, Jake’s smile slips into a frown as he watches the hostility in Mr. Minsk’s expression and the flash of hurt in Douglas Judy’s. Thus far, Misnk is ignoring Rosa as well, but Jake has a feeling that it’s because he does not actually want to look at her, though she has very visibly curled her small hands into fists.

(“Those boys were just bullies,” Jake says, feet stumbling to a stop and grabbing onto Rosa’s sleeve to stop her. “C’mon, Rosa, don’t listen to them!”

Rosa turns around, a strand of her coarse hair having fallen out of its pigtails and into her face, framing the scrape on her cheek. Her round face is tight and there’s a muscle under her lip that seems to twitch, and she shakes her head, hard. Jake is once again reminded of his mother’s words.

 _Some people like to hurt others based on things that don’t really count,_ bubeleh _. You can’t change that, but you can be nice to everyone, right? You can show everyone you care, and maybe smile at them a little. They’re people too, and they hurt just like you and me._

“No,” she says. “No, they – just, forget it. I’ll beat them up next time.”

“That’ll just make them mad,” says Jake, shaking his head and stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Listen, don’t _worry_ about them! I – I get it, me and Ma are treated differently too –”

Rosa’s scowl kills the words in Jake’s throat as effectively as a gentle stranglehold would, but he is, as usual, possessing the inimitable skill of taking to heart the childlike depth of Rosa Diaz’s critique on his world view.

“No,” she says in her funny accent, with her olive complexion and dark hair and too-large front teeth. “It’s not the same, Jake. You can never really get it.”)

 _It’s not the same, Jake_.

Jake’s fingers feel warm and his eyes sting, all at once. It _isn’t_ the same, and –

“Mr. Minsk,” Jake starts again, “if you could just –”

“You get home to your mother, kid,” says Mr. Minsk to Jake, his voice softer and suddenly, dramatically less like a bludgeon. There’s still a resigned quality to his voice, the sort that means he isn’t wholly happy that he’s dealing with a four foot-nothing Jewish boy, either, but the whiplash, dehumanizing bark of his voice is gone. He hasn’t yet spoken to Rosa; Jake gets the distinct impression that he’s avoiding actually _looking_ at her, a twitch to his upper lip each time his gaze moves up behind Jake. It’s a twitch that’s making Jake feel very funny, something more than _appalled_ tugging at his stomach. “Don’t get into business you don’t understand. And _you_ –” back to Doug Judy “– you wanna answer me? You can’t read? I’ll call the police, I will, you thief –”

“Leave him alone!” sounds Rosa’s voice suddenly from over Jake’s shoulder, and Mr. Minsk’s voice vanishes. His already pasty face seems to pale.

“ _Excuse_ me?”

“He hasn’t done anything, leave him alone!”

Not universe-shifting, perhaps, but – _important_.

“ _Yeah_ ,” says Jake, and maybe his ever-cold fingers reach back and grab Doug Judy’s shirtsleeve. “We saw him the _whole_ time, he didn’t steal anything!”

“There!” says Doug Judy, lightning-quick. “You heard him, sir, I ‘ain’t a criminal! It was just cold out, is all. _Sir._ ”

Mr. Minsk’s lip _does_ curl, this time, towering over the three of them and looking, in Jake’s opinion, profoundly scary. Scarier, even, than the three men he and Rosa had seen the previous week, shoving another guy down against the wet pavement and waving guns and fists, yelling something about someone named Iannucci.

There’s a long moment, once again, where Jake feels as though looking away from Mr. Minsk would be very foolish.

“Get outta here,” growls Minsk. “All of you. Now!”

They run, and there is something almost uniting in the collective scramble to get as far away from Mr. Minsk’s department store as possible.

( _Almost_ ; Jake says, wheezing terribly and with his hands on his knees, “You gotta, you gotta put it – back. Back where you got it. It’s the right thing –”

“You kidding?” says Doug Judy, an ear-splitting grin once more firmly in place, scarf still missing from his neck and cheeks still dimpled. “See ya, Peralta!”)

//

The curve of his neck where Rosa’s arm has been for the past two days feels cold and uncomfortable, awkward in its renewed emptiness.

Jake never thought that he could miss the feeling of an arm slung around his shoulders as much as he did.

Rosa’s arm has been around Jake’s shoulders since almost the moment he found her strapped to the table in the back room of that hellish base, sweat lining her brow and looking as though she was recovering from the whooping cough that Jake had struggled with so much as a child. Its gentle pressure has been present, anchoring through the gunfire and the explosions and Schmidt’s voice, licking up to burn them like the flames underneath as they stumbled across the suspended walkway. They’d walked the length of the trip home, the trees reaching up tall around them and defying the mire of the gunfight they’d escaped, almost glued at the hip.

Jake learns about Rosa’s infantry; the men that praise her for her skill with a needle _and_ a gun, and Jake shakes hands with all of them and tells them that he hasn’t _really_ punched Hitler in the face over two hundred times.

“Wouldn’t say no to the opportunity though, would you?” says the tallest of the lot. Jeffords is dark and bearded and looks as though he could have picked up the Jake from Before as one would a small package of grapes. He has a knowing look in his eye when he says this, and seems to like Jake, though Jake hasn’t met any of these men who _don’t_.

Perhaps breaking them out of Nazi prison has something to do with it. It’s a thought that leaves Jake feeling a little funny.

He gets to know them little by little through their admiration of Rosa, and Jake learns about Jeffords’ three daughters at home; about the five types of soft cheeses a small man named Boyle plans to eat when he finally gets to go home, an American having grown up in France for most of his life. Hitchcock and Scully are never seen apart, possibly older than some of their rusted cannons and Majors has a habit of lounging against everything with a detached sort of ease, something that Jake wonders if he can ever hope to emulate. (Amy tells him later that he’s the best sniper she has ever seen in her _whole life_ ; Jake wonders if he should start trying to copy Majors’ British accent.) The youngest is toeing the edge of his teens and insists that Jake calls him _Savant_ , a worthy name for a brilliant tactician, he explains, while Rosa and the Sergeant roll their eyes.

“His name’s Corey,” Rosa tells Jake, pretending that she isn’t walking with a limp and holding tightly to the strap of her appropriated gun. “You should call him that.”

They treat Jake with a hesitant respect that he can understand, not quite yet one of their own, but men possessing characters gregarious enough to let him in later. The stripes on his torso that Amy had classified as the pinnacle of patriotism are unimportant in their judgment, as are the street corner where he lives and his mother’s family name.

Jake thinks they’re wonderful.

He tells Rosa this, under a sky that’s suffering to find its cheer again, along with a joke: she’ll have to wear heels always, now, and she _hates_ doing that. They make their way through the French countryside toting rifles and hauling tanks, and she punches his arm and tells him he’s a damned idiot, what in God’s name was he _thinking_ , and like _hell_ she’s going to wear heels; those morons haven’t come up with a way to make heels practical and leather, and _he_ knows she’s really the taller one of their two, anyway.

The sun is shining for the first time in days when they reach the camp, and Jake can hear the birds through the canvas walls of the command tent.

“Reckless insubordination. _Direct_ disobeyal of a superior officer’s orders, commandeering of military resources, endangerment of fellow officers –”

“With all due respect, sir,” says Jake, looking at his knees. “Agent Santiago and Miss Linetti –”

“Were there of their own damned free will, yes, I know.” Jake looks up, startled, and watches as Colonel Holt sits down in the chair directly facing him with what could be called a weary sigh; his expression changes only with the slight dropping of the muscles framing his mouth, which is typical of him, Jake supposes. (Jake has missed him terribly.) “They’ve already informed me, in detail, the logic behind their actions.”

There’s a pause; Jake traces the outline of Holt’s uniform collar and takes a deep breath.

“Sir –”

“It was foolish of me to assume that you went through all this trouble just to prove something to yourself.”

“What?”

Holt straightens in his chair, leaning back and lacing his fingers across his lap. Jake stares at him. He can’t quite collect his thoughts well enough to be defensive, but his instinct is to recoil; their last encounter ended in Jake’s mounting frustration bubbling to the base of his throat, angry and desperate and more likely the cause of the snap to Holt’s voice than anything else.

( _False_ , says a voice in his head. _An entire infantry had been missing, remember_.)

“ _Everyone_ ,” Amy had once told him, in a quiet moment stolen before – _before_. She was still Agent Santiago, then, sitting with him on a field bench and crossing her ankles primly, the anxious twitch of uncertain friendship in her smile still mostly hidden. She spoke wholly seriously, sincere in a way that made Jake think she was talking about herself more than anything. “ _Everyone_ seeks Colonel Holt’s approval.”

Jake had not thought to point out that people like Private Pembroke – _beheyme_ , Nana would say, _not worth the slime on my boot_ – were not to be counted as part of her _everyone_. But then, he supposes, Colonel Holt was not willing to dole out approval to just _anyone_ , either. The mere fact that to Jake’s knowledge, neither Amy nor Gina had suffered any sort of dismissal thus far is more than enough to solidify his suspicion that Holt holds them in a much higher esteem than most.

At any rate, it’s not as though _he_ , _Jake_ , is – _seeking_ any such approval, as if he’s in primary school again and –

(Not that he ever sought his teachers’ approval in primary school, his mother’s voice chides at the back of his head.)

The inside of the tent is warm from the weak shine of the sun outside, and Jake shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Holt does not seem perturbed by Jake’s confusion.

“You see,” says Colonel Holt, “they were very clearly not willing to let you fight. That can be the source of … some frustration, in my experience.”

Sympathy is not something that Jake is expecting, if this could even be called _sympathy_.

“I had to get Rosa back,” says Jake quietly, looking at the slope of Holt’s shoulders and the way his hands have linked together. He doesn’t feel the need to elaborate further, and maybe that’s foolish of him, but Holt only nods.

“I know,” says Holt. “And you did.” He taps his fingers against each other – once, twice. Jake watches; there are birds singing outside again, more loudly than before in the woods – or maybe now, there’s more silence to host their singing. “Peralta, there is a difference between being a good soldier and and foolish boy.”

Jake feels his fists tighten, the muscles in his face twitching of their own accord at the layered reprimand.

“I’m not –”

“You have a need to prove yourself,” says Holt, his voice straight and narrow and entirely too calm. “Maybe not in this particular endeavour, but it’s there, and I know –”

“You have no _idea_ , sir –”

“I _know_ because I am more intimately familiar with it than you will ever understand,” says Colonel Holt, and now his shoulders have straightened, his voice loudened, his eyes flashing, bright against his dark skin. But his hands are relaxed against his legs, and he continues: “Do you know why they gave me this project, Captain Peralta?”

Jake blinks at him. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Because they thought it was going to fail.” His voice remains even but grows further in volume. He has never used _Captain_ before when addressing Jake. “I was such a good officer that there was no way in hell they could keep me on the sidelines, so instead they promoted me and stuck me here.” A pause. “With you.”

Jake takes a deep breath and meets Holt’s eyes, and they are not – they’re not accusatory.

“I was determined to make sure this project succeeded, and Erskine was determined to put you on the operating table. To be completely honest,” says Colonel Holt, “I thought he was mad.”

“Thanks,” says Jake, muttered, and then: “I – I’m sorry for being an a –”

“You saved over two-hundred lives,” says Holt; Jake’s apology falters in his throat. He stands up, and clasps his hands behind his back. “Peralta – take it from me. You have nothing to prove.”

Jake swallows, his throat working, and thinks of Senator Podolski: _That’s not how things work, kid_.

“I don’t – they want me to not be _me_.”

He’s not sure what makes him say it, but it’s out in the open, hovering between him and Holt in the mild air of the tent.

“Pardon my frankness,” says Holt, with very little intonation, “but to hell with what they want.”

Jake blinks at him; his uniform is pressed almost immaculately, his boots polished, his back straighter than Jake thinks is entirely possible to stand. A tall man, he strikes an imposing figure, standing above Jake and raising his eyebrows. His head tilts forward, waiting.

 _You’re the Captain now, Jake_.

“I,” says Jake. “I. Oh. Yeah – okay.”

Holt’s mouth twitches, and Jake swears it’s the closest thing to a smile he’s ever gotten out of him.

“That was one hell of a rescue, son.”

Jake grins. “Thanks, sir.”

//

A reason:

Rosa’s parents die on a Tuesday. Jake’s only just stopped wearing a scarf when he leaves the house, and the birds are slowly emerging from their hiding places to twitter after them when they walk home from work in the afternoons.

She cries in the privacy of the rickety fire escape of her building, tucking her sixteen-year-old legs against her chest. Jake finds her there after only fifteen minutes of looking and settles down beside her without a word. The air is still cool and sharp enough to send small shivers through him at alternate moments; he digs his fingers into his armpits and listens to her sniffling, tracing the metal catwalk underneath them with his eyes until Rosa’s breaths even out just a little bit. Rosa’s always loved dark colours, but now she is covered head to toe in black, wearing a starched, ironed dress that looks incredibly out of place covering her lanky frame. Jake wonders if this will change the way she smiles whenever she gets to go out in her favorite black blouse.

It is the only time she allows him to hug her as he does, with her head tucked against his chest and his arms rubbing at hers, and Jake doesn’t know how long they spend out there, lifted high above the sludge and despair of the alleyway underneath them.

Rosa’s sisters are no longer in Brooklyn – one is in Jersey, with her husband and three children, and the other in the Bronx, down by the rail tracks. They both offer for her to stay with them; neither she nor they can afford to keep her parents’ apartment – and besides, says Nana in a soft voice, as she and Jake and his mother walk back home from the funeral: it isn’t safe for a young girl to be all alone in a building with such abysmal locks.

(Nana has always taken issue with the locks, Jake remembers, through the March drizzle above them.)

Jake digs his hands into his pockets and kicks at the stones on the sidewalk in front of him, watching them stutter over the waterlogged concrete. He can feel the rain cling to his hairline and thicken his curls, its fingers creeping under his coat collar and clutching at his clothes.

He should have worn a scarf, he thinks.

Rosa comes for dinner, that night, and she and Jake clean up the table afterwards; she shuts down Karen’s protests and says that it’ll help her take her mind off of things. Jake watches, wiping the dishes dry, as Rosa scrubs at each dirty plate as though it has personally offended her. Her eyes are dark and her lips are thin and the wet rag scrapes against the metal and Jake counts the movements: _one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight –_

“You could stay here, you know,” says Jake, suddenly. Rosa’s arm freezes.

The clock on the mantlepiece ticks, and Jake counts again: _one, two, three, four_ –

“Jake,” starts Rosa.

“At least until you can, can get back on your feet – Rosa, seriously. Seriously. Don’t – don’t make it a thing.”

She places the plate back into the bucket. He can see her fingers digging into the rag, and she lets her neck loosen, her head dropping and coils of her thick hair falling down to frame her face. Her voice is stiff, laced with a softness that unnerves Jake.

“I don’t know,” she says.

Jake places his palms on the counter and pulls himself up so that he’s sitting, the few washed dishes drying on a raggedy towel by his thigh.

“D’you want to go to your sister’s? If you do that’s fine, it’s – I mean, I just thought –”

“No,” Rosa says, pressing the rag into the edge of the counter. It’s grey and looks dirtier than it should, tangled holes lining the middle where it’s been rubbed raw from use. (This is, somewhat, what Rosa’s voice sounds like.) “No.”

“Listen,” continues Jake, turning over a spoon in his hands. “We could set up blankets on the floor, like we did when we were kids. It’ll be fun.”

 _Fun_ has always been a word with a volatile definition, morphing from day to day to fit into their little corner of Brooklyn. The bitter winters, for example, have never been fun – nor the harsh words thrown their way, nor the constant struggle for survival. Jake can see the beads of the rosary that until just a week ago belonged to Rosa’s mother hanging around her neck; she’s stopped holding it in her hand, he realizes. Later, the week following, Jake’s Nana will ask Rosa quietly if she’d like to come with them to the synagogue, and Rosa will say yes and clutch those beads in her hand the whole time, rubbing them in between prayers. They will sit near the back and Jake will take care to keep his hand close to hers, just so that she knows he’s there.

Now, Rosa looks up, rag held tightly in her fingers, the skin around her eyes puffier than Jake’s ever seen it.

“Are you,” starts Rosa, and then swallows. “Are you sure?”

Jake says, “ _Obviously_ ,” with so much gusto that Rosa is able to find the energy to scowl. So Jake smiles, a slight quirk of the mouth, and kicks his legs out into the kitchen.

And then:

“Thanks, Jake.” Her voice is soft and unlike her again, and Jake bites his lip.

“Listen,” he says again, and his words may not be the most articulate or the most eloquent, but the spoon in his hands lays forgotten on the counter and he reaches out a hand to knock gently against her shoulder. “Listen, Rosa. We’re in it together, right? You’re my friend, and I’m not just gonna let you –” Ah. There, the words have run out. Jake takes a deep breath and shrugs. “It’s just – look. I’d rather – I’d rather have to – I’d rather not have a bed – no, listen, listen, I’d rather have to do a _thousand_ push-ups than let you down.”

Rosa scoffs, something of what she usually is, which is what Jake was going for, pretty much. “You can’t do _one_.”

“I know,” says Jake, “which is how _serious_ I am about this!”

She, too, bites her lip now. “A thousand push-ups?”

“Yep,” says Jake. “I promise I’ll do them, too. If I’m ever – you know.”

(Sometimes it’s better not to repeat oneself too many times, Jake thinks. Or maybe he and Rosa are just terrible with emotions.)

Rosa places the rag down and crosses her arms. There is a beat, just one, before she steps forwards and hugs him. It lasts all of a half-second and is rough and sloppy, but then Rosa says, “Yeah, I – I know,” and Jake thinks that they’re going to be okay.

//

Jake’s always been good at solving puzzles, and the map on Schmidt’s wall is just a really, really big one. This is what he tells Colonel Holt, anyway, after they spread their own map on the briefing table and pin down all the places Jake remembers, from the one brief glance he had as he tugged off the straps holding Rosa down.

They raid the bases one by one, and slowly, they become a team. There are days where Jake feels his ears ringing with the sound of bullets and wishes that he could go back home, wonders if his mother is getting enough sleep and if Mrs. Lewenski is sharing her _rugelach_ more. There are days where he lays on his cot and stares at the canvas ceiling and feels, listening to the pitter-patter of the rain, as though the moon itself is crying.

( _Always so dramatic_ , says Nana’s voice again, honey-coloured and contrasting against the chill of the oncoming winter.)

Sometimes, it’s hard.

Except – slowly, perhaps even inevitably – they become a team. 

Sergeant Terry Jeffords is quick to laugh and towers over all the rest of them, spending his free time sketching far better than anything Jake’s ever managed in a small notebook and boasting of his talented three-year-olds, spending spare moments passing around a pendant holding their photographs for everyone to see. When he snaps, it’s terrifying, but he is always quick to catch himself – “Never let them get to you,” he tells Jake one evening, sitting down beside him at the campfire and handing him a mug. “Terry worked hard to get where he is. Can’t blow that away for a temper tantrum, can I?” Jake likes him, has to constantly remind himself not to defer to him in briefings; Jeffords is older and more experienced and grins at Jake in a way that Jake feels _should_ be familiar but isn’t, and even though there’s often risk of splintering ribs, receiving a bear hug from the Sarge is something that makes Jake feel a little bit invincible – more than any super soldier serum ever did.

Charles Boyle claims Jake as his best friend very soon after meeting, a little bit eccentric and a lot enthusiastic. Too enthusiastic for a goddamn war zone, Rosa sometimes grumbles, but Jake likes his enthusiasm. He’s a brilliant tactician, at any rate; he spends hours pouring over charts and graphs and formations, plotting each team member’s position and entrance for every raid. He sometimes tries to make homemade yoghurt in his satchel and appears to be constantly in awe of Jake’s uniform, but he also has a love back home – “Genevieve,” he tells Jake one afternoon, tramping through the snow, dreaminess suffusing into his voice. “She’s _wonderful_. She knows all the best uses for pickled goat testicles – not many people know that, you know, and _oh_ –”

Jake usually interrupts him at this point with a, “That sounds great, pal,” and turns to elbow Savant in the ribs (gently, because sometimes he still forgets his own strength) to silence his mimed gagging. The kid’s quick with a gun and a natural code breaker, and Jake’s seen Amy’s eyes widen at the speed with which he can catch coordinates so many times it’s become almost a habit to raise his eyebrows at her, just to see her scrunch her nose into a frown. Jake asks him once, how he got into code breaking, and he mutters something about proving to people that he can be trusted. It’s hard to feel anything but angry, hearing that, Jake thinks, when he looks at the shaggy black hair and the way Corey Parker’s eyes light up clicking through Morse on the table. Rosa thinks he’s good for nothing but tolerates him, but Gina, honorary member and sometimes-munitions expert of their rag-tag band of adopted strays, starts calling him her protégé. Jake leans back and watches him squirm at her grand gesturing and drawling voice, and grins when she squeezes his cheek and wheedles a grin out of Rosa in the same move.

Gina decides that she’s going to teach him the ways of the world in between designing his new costume, figuring out “that crazy blue thing,” and pin-pointing all of their strike points on the mock-up of Schmidt’s map. Jake learns what fondue is the same day he learns how soft Private Perez’s lips are and how deadly Amy’s aim is, and Gina slings an arm around his shoulder and tuts as she leads him to the next room.

“Kid, you’ve gotta stop letting yourself get ambushed or people’ll start callin’ you a pushover,” she says, and Jake pretends his cheeks aren’t flushing because Colonel Holt is walking into the room, eyebrows raised in a fashion that means he’s just passed the Santiago Temper in action.

“Captain,” says Holt, clasping his hands behind his back. Jake swallows. “Nice shield.”

“Thank you, sir,” says Jake.

“C’mon, sugar,” says Gina, grinning happily at Holt and pushing the shield further into Jake’s arms. “Show me all the fancy gadgets you stole from Schmidt’s freak factory and I’ll tell you how to get Agent Lovebird over there un-mad. ‘S’not like Perez meant any harm, she was just going for it like any girl with eyes would.” She wrinkles her nose in distaste. “Excluding _moi_.” 

“ _Linetti_ ,” hisses Jake, clutching the edges of his new shield and hoping his voice isn’t coming out too strangled.

“Oh, no,” says Colonel Holt, expression utterly unflappable. (Jake’s one hundred percent sure he’s laughing at him.) “Miss Linetti makes an excellent point, Peralta. I’d take her advice, if I were you.”

As Jake expected, Gina and Rosa get along like two unlikely peas in a pod, and Jake can’t say it isn’t amusing watching people’s general discomfort when the two of them sit near each other in a room, whether it be a formal brief or a night off for drinks. Rosa can carry a rifle with the best of them and is lauded as a genius with a needle, and it’s now that she gets the chance to tell everyone how that’s Jake’s fault – if he wasn’t so much of a patented moron, a _tonto_ , then she wouldn’t know anything about stitching people up. More than anything, Jake is glad to have her back again, glad to hear her voice again. He misses his mother and grandmother, sometimes, but like Amy says one night, sitting on the edge of a cargo truck the eve of another mission, her smoking a cigarette and him tapping his pencil on his thigh erratically – it’s almost like having them here, in a way, now that Rosa’s around.

He watches the way her smoke curls into the air and wants to say that he is immensely glad she knows Rosa. Only – only. Saying that would mean something more than it is, and Jake twists the pencil in his hands and says, “Yeah, yeah – you’re right,” instead.

( _Slowly, they become a team_.)

He carries Amy’s picture around in a small compass that Charles gives him two weeks after they meet, pinned to the inner alcove and peeling at the edge, Amy’s aim and fondue and Private Perez’s smile be damned, and it’s – well. Jake carries the picture.

Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn’t, and he doesn’t bother hiding it from the rest of the team – Rosa smirks knowingly and goes back to cleaning the long knife that she allegedly stole from Holt’s armoury, Savant rolls his eyes, and Terry doesn’t do anything at all, because for him, that’s just a normal part of life.

(Scully asks who it is, one day – “You only see her at every goddamn _briefing_ ,” groans Rosa, once more attending to her treasured knife – and Jake doesn’t know what to say.)

“I think it’s beautiful,” Charles tells him sincerely, shaking his head in a sort of awed disbelief. “So _romantic_! Carrying around the love of your life –”

“I’m gonna stop you right there, Charles,” says Jake, patting him on the shoulder a little more firmly than perhaps necessary. He doesn’t say that some nights, he stares at the ceiling above his cot and thinks about what it might feel like to kiss Amy, instead of about the rain.

Rosa says, “Boyle, get over here and tell me what the plan tomorrow morning is again,” her voice barking and rough, and Jake is left to rub his thumb against the edge of the compass and avoid the way she raises an eyebrow at him when Charles’s back is turned.

( _Slowly, they become a team._ )

They crash into a base in Poland, ever nearer to Schmidt and his plan – if there even is one. Holt’s given them the name _Doctor Zola_ and Jake realizes halfway through their raid that Schmidt’s set up shop on the edge of a small city; there are people around them, people screaming, and it takes all of his willpower to not fumble his shield when an explosion sounds off, more sonic than standard and Jake knows that they’re not going out without a fight. People are going to die.

That’s what goes through his head when he sees the little girl, tiny and hidden behind a fallen slab of brick, her cries piercing the dwindling spray of bullets in the background of Jake’s consciousness. Somewhere, Terry barks something about surrender and Jake drops to his knees, holding his shield up on instinct and ducking behind the bricks to face the little girl. Her eyes go wide and terrified in the moment before Jake speaks; he wedges the shield between the ground and the brick and faces her, holding up his hands quickly in front of him in surrender.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Jake says, and he is surprised by the panic in his own voice. “It’s okay – I swear I won’t hurt you.”

She shakes her head, once and twice and the movement is erratic, like a spooked rabbit. Her lower lip is trembling and Jake feels something in his throat tighten. She is Polish and doesn’t understand a word of English, and Jake feels like crying looking at her split lip and the dirt in her soft curly hair, so he blurts the first thing that comes to his mind, a word of the lullabies Nana and then his mother used to sing when Jake was small and crying over anything more serious than a scraped knee.

 _Besholem_ – safe.

His Yiddish is broken and fumbling and he is acting on autopilot, but then – the Earth _moves_ , Jake swears, because the explosions stop and the girl’s cries die as she understands, eyes widening in recognition. She _understands_. 

When Jake reaches up to pull off his mask, she stops trembling – just a little bit. She is a Jewish girl in a town occupied by Hydra and Jake feels his insides drop and shrinkwrap into themselves, ice cold.

There are tears glistening on her cheeks.

“Me too,” he says, pointing at himself. “ _Mir, mir aoykh_.”

There is a difference in the way they pronounce the words, in the lilt of her accent and the feel of the consonants. But the way her fear trickles away is something Jake thinks might be universal – _it’s okay, it’s fine, you’re like me_. He lets her climb into his arms and she reminds him of the children who lived in the basement of their apartment building, who sometimes came upstairs to benefit from Nana’s soup and pull at Jake’s too-long hair. She refuses to let go until they find her mother, two hours later a mile away in the dirt and destruction. He almost doesn’t want to say goodbye.

“C’mon, Jake,” says Terry quietly, a hand on his shoulder, and Jake thinks that maybe that makes things a little bit easier.

( _S_ _lowly, they become a team._ )

“The Howling Commandos,” is said after one of their most successful raids, tossing the modified weaponry they’ve collected from Schmidt’s armories onto the ground where the pile is steadily growing. Savant grins and clicks his fingers. “On account of Boyle doing that weird war-whoop thing when we blew up the last base.”

“Yes!” says Charles, doing a little jig in place. “I’m famous and influential!”

“You’re shitting me,” says Rosa, leaning back against the wall behind them and ignoring Terry’s aghast expression at her crass language. _“_ _No estamos nombrando –_ we’re not _naming_ ourselves, Parker.”

“You have … named yourselves,” says Colonel Holt. Jake bites his lip and hands Holt the stack of files they retrieved, rocking back and forth on his heels.

“Yes, sir,” he says, and Rosa audibly rolls her eyes. He can see Amy behind Holt, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips, and he releases his lip and grins. “You didn’t know how famous Boyle was?”

Holt’s jaw twitches, and Jake swears it’s the broadest smile he’s ever seen him give.

( _Slowly, they become a team_.)

“Bottoms up.”

The atmosphere in the pub is full of laughter and warm, buttery light. Rosa plunks down the drinks in front of them and slides into the seat across from Jake, smirking. Jake grins at her.

“Remember when we were kids and we used to think it’d be _so wild_ to say ‘bottoms up’.”

“That was just you,” says Rosa, but her eyes shine, with the flickering light of the films they saw in the cinema with devil-may-care heroes that leant casually against bars the same way Majors is right now – _damn him_ , Jake thinks with a small grin. “Hey – this is nice.”

“Aside from the whole impending doom thing,” says Jake without thinking. “Yeah.”

Her rare smile slips away and Jake inhales sharply, turning his head to look back across the room. Terry and Savant are calling for more drinks at the bar, loud and very slightly raucous, and Gina has a crowd gathered around her in an armchair that Jake swears wasn’t even in the room an hour ago, holding a wine glass and looking supremely out of place and completely belonging at once. The noise is filling up the space so that Jake can pretend he doesn’t hear Rosa’s soft, “ _mierda_ ,” the curse swallowed by the merriment around them. Her father, Jake remembers, used to favor it.

His eye catches Amy, who is apparently learning how to dance from a very patient Boyle. Her laughter is full and radiant, her red dress captivating, and Jake can’t help but watch them stumble their way across the middle of the room until Rosa kicks him under the table.

“Hey, Humphrey Bogart. Focus.”

“What – sorry, I just –”

“Jake,” says Rosa, her voice the one that doesn’t leave room for any protest. “Something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” says Jake, jiggling his leg under the table. “Thanks for the drink –”

“ _Stop_ ,” says Rosa. “You know I’m not good that this. What’s wrong.”

Jake wants to say, _I’m not good at this either_. But Rosa is looking right at him, dark eyes blazing in the yellow lighting of the pub, and Jake exhales.

“I just – you ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?”

His eyes drop down to the table almost instinctively, and he hears, rather than sees, Rosa’s frown. He traces the pattern in the grain of the wood with his eyes, the places where its wax has been scratched, before there’s a sudden gentle pressure against his shoulder.

Rosa’s smiling, which is strange in and of itself (he’s often thought she and Colonel Holt should start offering people lessons), before she squeezes his shoulder.

“I’m not following Captain America anywhere,” she says.

Well.

“Well,” says Jake. “That’s just –”

“Don’t be a dumb-dumb,” says Rosa. “I’m following _you_ – my sad sack best friend from Brooklyn who almost drowned one time saving a goddamned kitten from a pack of bullies. That’s who I’m following.”

It is, in all honesty, likely the most sentimental Rosa has ever gotten, and Jake feels the smile grow on his face despite his best efforts to stay serious.

“Yeah?”

“One thousand pushups,” says Rosa. “I _promise_ , Jake.”

“Come on,” says Jake, pretending that his voice isn’t a little hoarse. “I’ll buy you another drink and you can tell me why you’re totally crazy.”

Rosa shoves his shoulder, sitting there dressed in slacks and a leather jacket and looking more comfortable than Jake has ever seen her, and he grins; something in his chest has lifted.

Maybe he’ll even ask Amy to dance.

//

A reason:

Nana has told Jake stories for as long as he can remember. She’s an animated storyteller, painting vivid, exciting pictures with her words and hands. Her voice changes as the different characters do – croaking goblins, loud and stately kings, the youthful bravery of heroes like Esther and David filling up the small bedroom, trailing past him through the door, sometimes, into the kitchen where his mother stands kneading dough or folding laundry. Every so often, their storytelling game is moved to the small table by the stove, and Karen puts away her work and sits with them, carding her hands through Jake’s hair as he finishes his grandmother’s sentences for her through the stories he loves the best.

Nana smiles a lot when she tells stories. The lines on her face deepen as she does, becoming more defined, carrying more ups and downs and twists and turns in them. Jake listens with rapt attention. Nana’s fairytales are real in a way that he can’t explain – real in a way that is different from the unchangeable harshness of his missing father, or his mother’s tired shoulders, or the cough in his chest.

He is nine years old – hardly old enough to string together the true meaning of _selflessness_ or _sacrifice_. If Mrs. Stratton ever gave him these stories as reading assignments for school, he’d have great difficulty unpackaging the moral of goodness, in even the least comely of people, to write down on paper in a report. But he’s always found it neat that a funny-sounding goblin would help out Simeon the way he does.

“ _Now_ , Ben Temalion!” says Nana, lifting her chin up and intoning deeply as the good Rabbi. “How can we possibly tell this princess is no longer mad?!”

“The windows all shatter!” says Jake excitedly, bouncing up and down at the dinner table in his seat. “And she calls them old men –”

“Don’t ruin the story!” says Karen, laughter in her voice. “I want to be surprised!”

“You’ve heard this story before, Ma,” says Jake, and it’s entirely blameless in its childlike cheer. “C’mon, you _know_ the windows shatter!”

“ _Shhh_ ,” says his mother, leaving her laundry be at the table and wrapping her arms around him from behind his chair. “The great master hasn’t finished her tale!”

And, indeed, the great master is mid-hand gesture, her hazel eyes twinkling with something playful and sharp. Nana’s greying hair is swept back in its customary kerchief, her feet tucked behind the legs of the chair she’s sitting on. He back is straighter than usual, caught in the building energy of the fairytale she’s telling, and she smiles, now, lowering her hands.

“Mmm,” says Nana, tapping the table. And then she says something unthinkable – something wholly unexpected. “This time the windows don’t shatter!”

“ _What_!” says Jake, gasping in a breath that scratches at his throat. “But the goblin always comes through! What happens to the princess?”

“The goblin, you see,” says Nana, her voice taking on a very grave, solemn tone, “he wanted to help – he really did. But he was stuck in the princess’s body! Never to escape! And the king threw the good men into jail –”

“ _No_ ,” says Jake. The kitchen is lit by the one flickering bulb above their heads and the remains of dinner are still sitting on the stove, and Jake, dressed in his pajamas and trying very hard to avoid Bedtime, is utterly devastated. “The goblin’s s’posed to help them! That’s – Nana, you can’t _change_ the story just ‘cause I know it –”

“Well, this took a dark turn,” mutters his mother, but her fingers comb through Jake’s hair and she remains standing behind his seat.

“But why,” says Jake, not one to let such a thing as a tragic fairytale slide without a fight. “ _Why’d_ the goblin get stuck?”

“That’s the way the world spins, sometimes,” says Nana simply, shaking her head. Jake stares at her in shock.

“That’s not fair!”

Nana chuckles softly, but his mother takes her hands away and turns Jake to look at her, a smile gracing her lips. Something flickers through her eyes, and her calloused hands are not enough to steady Jake; it feels, for a moment, as though nothing can be right in the world.

“Jake, sweetheart,” says Karen. Her voice is soft. “Sometimes the goblin just gets stuck.”

(He is nine years old and does not realize that his grandmother has taught him a life lesson until he is hanging over a precipice and screaming his best friend’s name.)

//

He has always been one to cry easily. The boys at school used to push him around for it, call him names and laugh. Jake knows intimately the feeling of being full of anger and rage, fists trembling as you stand up to defend ( _yourself, others, something that you’d be at pains to name or articulate but is profoundly real and important_ ) only to find that there are tears blinding your eyes and your voice is breaking even as you challenge life with your head held high.

Jake has always been one to cry easily.

Rosa rarely ever cried.

He sits, now, staring at the table, willing the tears to come. There is something immovable lodged in his chest, tendrils clawing at his lungs and throat and the sides of his ribs. It’s suffocating, almost, this feeling – like he’s trapped, trapped in something so utterly beyond his control that he, who has always fumbled with words, cannot even begin to articulate it. The stars are once again hidden with the fog of the sky’s breath, some of it peeking through the destruction decorating the building he’s hidden himself in, and it feels – appropriate.

Through the paralysis, it feels as though portions of his brain are stuck like a broken record, playing in loops over themselves. Nana’s voice, reciting the prayer for the departed; the spitting, metallic attack of bullets against his shield, the vibrations swallowed into its painted colours;

Rosa, _falling_.

_Oh God, full of compassion, who dwells on high –_

Falling, falling, falling

_Oh God, full of compassion, who dwells on high –_

Falling

Falling

Falling

 _Oh God, full of compassion_ –

The bullets sound again and he doesn’t even register his own flinch, the way his eyes squeeze shut and he wants to scream because Nana’s voice is playing over and over and he _can’t remember the rest_ –

“AH!”

“Jake! Jake, it’s just me – oh, God, I’m sorry I just –”

Amy’s voice rises in pitch and her hands hover in front of her; she’s moving them back and forth, having just pulled away from his shoulder. They flap once, twice, and her anxiety deepens the crease between her eyebrows. She’s apologizing and Jake blinks, staring at the table in front of him, his breath ragged in his chest. He’s not drunk, despite his best efforts, and so he can’t attribute the heavy blanket that’s smothering his alertness to alcohol. He lets out a long, stuttering exhale and shakes his head.

“No – no. S’okay, I just – I wasn’t paying attention.” 

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, this time in a whisper. It means more than one thing and Jake can’t help but hate it, every syllable of it, soft and spoken in Amy’s voice though it may be. “Holt told me where you were,” she adds, equally soft, easing herself into the seat beside him.

He nods mutely, and realizes after all the breath has left his chest in another exhale that she’s talking again – chattering, stumbling over herself in a way that is uniquely Agent Amy Santiago. The woman who has defied all expectation, who speaks four languages and is well known for her ability to decipher the most difficult of algorithms, and she falls into a nervous habit of rambling whenever upset. Jake’s known her long enough, by now, to realize that it’s because of of a desperate need to make people comfortable around her, to _like_ her.

He can understand this intimately, most of the time.

_Fallingfallingfallingfalling,_

( _Oh God, full of compassion_ –)

“She’s my best friend,” he says, surprising himself. And he is not good with words, never has been, but these ones cut through Amy’s sweet, fumbling voice and fall broken in pieces onto the table, beside the two empty bottles of the cheap vodka Charles had found in one of the bases they’d raided. He doesn’t realize he is speaking in present tense. He _does_ realize that Amy’s shoulders sag, her usually immaculate posture wilting in the crumbling awning of the bombed pub that he’s sitting in.

Perhaps it’s because Jake doesn’t say anything else, and she once more needs to fill the silence to escape the resounding ache in the air. But he has only a moment to stare unseeing at the scratches and grooves in the table before Amy starts speaking again.

(Her words are hesitant and stuttering and Amy Santiago is rarely ever _stuttering_ , and his chest tightens, sharply.)

“She – she always, you know. She told me that she had my back. Me and Gina’s, I think, was what she said – and it was. We spent some time together before – I mean. I just, I wanted to say. She – she looked out. She looked out for us. For me.”

He looks up, finally, and it’s as though someone’s cut through the blanket held against his face. Amy’s eyes are big and sincere and liquid in the moonlight, an ache in them that is a small reflection of his own. A thought pops into his head, suddenly – one that he remembers hiding away what seems like lifetimes ago, and it’s now that he realizes that he was right; there are other people who know Rosa, now, other people besides him and her _abuela_ who have touched Rosa’s life. (He was also wrong; she had never promised a thousand pushups to anyone else.)

And now Rosa Diaz is gone and he is left and all he can do is look at Amy and think that he is glad, he is _glad_ that she knows how loyal Rosa is.

 _Was_.

(He thinks, suddenly, that Nana would blame the locks on the train car door. His chest, which is supposed to be so strong and invincible, now, splinters.)

“Me, too,” he says, and his voice splinters along with his chest.

(He has always been one to cry easily.)

There’s something instinctive about curling into yourself when you sob, about covering your face and mouth with the palms of your hands. Through the muted, erratic rhythm, gentle hands press against his shoulders and wrap around him; he feels her stiffen momentarily but he leans against her, more instinct than anything, and she softens in increments. He wants to thank her, to do more than let Amy’s calloused hands, so rough with a gun and so aggressive as fists, guide his torso to rest against hers. He presses his face against the lapel of her jacket and sobs because his friend is gone and he had no power to stop it from happening, and they sit like that for a long time. He can hear Amy’s soft sniffling above him. It’s not comforting, exactly, but it’s – something. It’s something, and it tugs at his chest in ways that are familiar and unfamiliar at once.

His breathing evens out, after a fashion, a fragile steadiness that occurs when all the tears possessed in one’s soul have been spent. He feels everything keenly in one sudden swoop; Amy’s hands against his back and neck, her heartbeat against his ear, and the soft flutter of her breath over the top of his head. He can smell the mustiness of the rubble around them and taste the salt and alcohol on his tongue, and when Amy presses a kiss, more softly than ever imaginable, to the crown of his head, Jake lifts his face from her shoulder to look at her properly.

There are tear tracks along her cheeks, but her eyes are fierce – determined. The moon is shining from behind her, lighting up her perfectly-curled hair like a halo and her face is lined with a muted pain and impossibly close to his own, and she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. It doesn’t come with fanfare or drums, just as what follows does not. They are close enough that all that is needed is a tilt of the head, after all.

(He kisses her softly, gently, and where his nose brushes against her cheek it comes away wet.)

The ache in his chest has migrated and concentrated on his heart, but Amy presses her forehead against his and Jake can breathe again.

_Oh God, full of compassion, who dwells on high. Please – she’s with you know, I guess. Keep her safe._

///

A reason:

He sits on a wooden chair that feels too spindly for his new weight, staring at his hands and only now noticing the way his old shirt no longer fits correctly around his shoulders, and wonders if Dr. Erskine is going to get a Jewish funeral.

///

(He has run out of reasons that have always been there, and so he creates a new one.)

“Did I ever tell you why I wanted to fight?”

Amy’s voice falters on the other side of the line, static crackling over her hesitation. Jake realizes too late that his voice is _resigned_ – that it carries a tired quietness that is devoid of the adrenaline that he should be feeling right now. His fingers are tight on the controls of the plane ( _he has never before flown a plane_ ), and his ears are still ringing with the echo of the Red Skull’s last scream, Schmidt’s demon eyes flickering behind Jake’s eyelids each time he dares to blink.

The radio static is frustrating beyond belief. There is a trickle of desperation in his voice, clawing its way into his vocal chords like the rats that used to occupy the back corner of the basement of their building. He tastes blood in his mouth and watches the clouds dance and scream silently past the windshield of the plan, and thinks that it’s no more than the fear that he won’t hear Amy’s voice again.

 _God, that’s melodramatic garbage_ , sounds Rosa’s voice in his head, sudden and aching.

“ _Jake_.”

Amy’s voice is soft but clear through the radio static, and he hates with his whole being that he can hear the tremble in it.

“I just thought – you know. I told Erskine, when he asked me, that I wanted to fight because I was Jewish.”

“That’s fair,” says Amy, in a way that makes Jake sure she’s trying to treat this like a normal conversation, like all of the chats they’ve had in the corners of tents and on the backs of cargo trucks. He can picture her clearly, sitting straight at the control panel, refusing to look Colonel Holt in the eye because that would give too much away. (More than a public kiss would, more than smiles and soft brushes of the hands ever, ever would.)

“But I –” Jake falters. He can still feel the bruising press of her lips, wind pulling at her hair as the car sped down the track.

 _I’m Jewish_ , he’d said, and he cannot think of a more worthy reason, but. It is not only _his_ reason, he’s come to understand. He knows the grateful smile on Mrs. Schillens’s face and the bravado in Doug Judy’s. He’s seen the way some of the officers don’t bother to address Corey directly, how Gina told him one night, in the dimmed briefing room ironing out the details of his new costume, that she had grand plans to marry Howard Stark – for his brains and his money _and_ his charm, she’d promised, but also, in a quieter voice: so that she wouldn’t have to always be fighting to be seen.

He sees it in Amy’s posture and in the bite to Holt’s voice and Terry’s smile and God, _God_ , he’s seen it in Rosa’s entire being since they were eight years old and she named a tiny mewling kitten _The Slug_ and told Jake that girls could be tough, too, her Spanish accent slipping out from behind her too-large front teeth.

He thinks of telling his mother about all of these people the way he told with delight in his voice about the little Jewish barber and the daffodils, and he wishes he could have hugged Nana one more time, before he left.

The truth of it, Jake thinks, stomach lurching as the plane jolts, the static on the radio stretching in the silence – the truth of it is that everybody is fighting to be seen as more than they’re told they are, and _the truth of it_ , the sort of truth that ambushes you when you’re hurtling towards a field of ice in a plane holding a fatal explosive and trying not to break down crying over a terrible radio connection with the most incredible woman you have ever met –

It’s that nobody should be made to feel _less_ in the first place.

“I should’ve answered differently,” says Jake, and feels the tightness in his own throat. “It’s not fair, you know? None – none of this is fair, Amy. That’s why I wanted to fight.”

“Jake,” and her voice has a warning tone to it now. “Jake, listen –”

“I’ve gotta land this plane,” he says, the words coming out as though on autopilot ( _the autopilot is broken_ ), his jaw trembling of its own accord ( _he’s always been one to cry easily_ ), and a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like his mother’s telling him to sit straighter against the pilot’s seat ( _it’s going to be okay_ ).

“No!” Amy’s voice has lost all casual pretence now, a crack cutting clean across it (a tidy break, like with a sharpened knife) through their fuzzy connection. “You can’t, you _can’t_ , you’re Captain America – Jake, they _need_ – they need Captain America –”

“Amy –”

“ _I_ need –”

The plane jolts again, and the connection crackles so loudly that Jake winces.

“Amy,” he says, the whiteness in front of him blurring. “Listen. It’ll be fine, I – you can have all the remaining missions, right? If Holt has any more of those for us – I know you love filling out the reports, and – and I’m gonna teach you how to dance, okay? Like, how to do it properly – better than Charles, Charles’s dancing is the worst –”

“ _Jake_ ,” and her voice is breaking, crumbling through their static-y connection. Colonel Holt would be proud, Jake thinks, because he’s no longer looking to prove himself. There’s a difference between selfless sacrifice and making a show of oneself, just as there is a difference between a good soldier and a foolish boy.

 _Not a perfect soldier_ , he remembers suddenly, less like a thunderclap than another jolt of the plane, and Jake has to bite down, hard, on his own cheek, to stop any sound from escaping his mouth.

“It’s gonna be okay, Ames. It’s gonna be –”

 _I’m following that kid from Brooklyn who nearly drowned saving a goddamned cat_.

“Jake? Jake!”

...

...

///

_“I should like to help everyone – if possible – Jew, Gentile – black man – white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness – not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way._

_Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men – cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world – millions of despairing men, women, and little children – victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people._

_To those who can hear me, I say – do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed – the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish._

_Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes – men who despise you – enslave you – who regiment your lives – tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you – diet you – treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men – machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate – the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!_

_In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” – not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power – the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure._

_Then – in the name of democracy – let us use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world – a decent world that will give men a chance to work – that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!_

_Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers – to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!”_

→ Charles Chaplin, _The Great Dictator_ (1940)

**Author's Note:**

> NOTES, MY FRIENDS:  
> \- if the length of the story wasn't enough, let me present you with this seemingly endless scroll of references and notes! first off, majority of the languages -- the yiddish and the spanish -- were taken from a combination of this glossary: http://kehillatisrael.net/docs/yiddish/yiddish.htm and, unfortunately, google translate. I tried to cross reference the translate stuff with other sites, which i do not have the urls to, but if I got anything flagrantly wrong please dont hesitate to gently point it out. I am from a jewish background, but I've never learned yiddish; and, of course, the extent of my spanish is things that I've learned from in the heights and rosa diaz
> 
> \- the reason i chose jake, other than my undying love for brooklyn nine nine, is multifaceted. but honestly, jake is _very similar_ to steve; kid growing up in brooklyn with his mom, implied to be kinda poor, suffered from asthma, is the embodiment of the little guy who stands up to bullies and gets pantsed for his efforts and shoved into a locker. if nothing else, i've always thought that cap would've been one of jake's heroes growing up, and so the connection was kind of immediate and life-changing, when i came to write this. 
> 
> \- i struggled a lot at first because jake is an inherently _non_ violent character and rarely ever throws the first punch unless EXTREMELY provoked (aside from, you know, his job). i wondered if it would make sense for him to fill steve "doesn't know when to put his fists down" rogers's shoes, but then -- jake doesn't know when to shut his mouth. he'll go off at people and he won't know when to stop, and consequently get punched for his efforts -- and then he STILL doesn't know when to shut up, even after a fist to the face. so, in that sense, it is wholly reasonable to assume that jake could spend a lot of time getting into fist fights were he not a cop.
> 
> \- the references to charlie chaplin's _the great dictator_ are many and very deliberate, for a LOT of reasons. first: the essence of chaplin's speech at the end is very much the purpose of this fic. while antisemitism was what i had originally wanted to fight, i realized very soon that anger towards sexism, racism, and other such -isms were inherent within the structure of the fic. all the other characters were struggling with the same things jake was, many of them on even deeper levels, and the essence -- that one should fight for unity and equality and brotherhood -- was something that i thought _the great dictator_ really captures. in addition to that, I needed a die hard for jake to love, and tgd came out in 1940, which, if I'm not mistaken, would set jake and rosa at about ... 17/18 in this fic? the character of the little jewish barber, who refuses to let himself be defined by others, in my opinion, would be very appealing to jake. in ADDITION to that, referencing chaplin is, at once, both a shoutout to the fact that chaplin held for many years the title of Favorite Comedian for my brother and i -- a title now passed on to andy samberg -- and, to the fact that samberg actually now owns chaplin's old house. FUN FACTS, everyone!!!
> 
> \- this story was, in many ways, an homage to jake and rosa's friendship. the decision to have rosa as bucky, rather than gina, was not _difficult_ , per say, but did hold some weight, as it would mean gina and jake would not be childhood friends. the entire dynamic would change. but I think -- in many ways, rosa is the only person who could have been bucky. the camradery between them, and (almost) unspoken love and fundamental trust they share, is something that reflects steve and bucky closely. obviously there are differences, but, consider: "I'm with you til the end of the line", but swapped with "a thousand pushups". what can i say, I'm a genius,
> 
> \- the story nana tells about the goblin and the princess is taken from a little book of jewish fairy tales I found at a book giveaway at my cousin's school, and let me tell you, that book is HUGELY amusing. the stories range from nice moral things to utterly outrageous in their uselessness, and it's a wild ride the whole way through
> 
> \- amy and gina 100% know about holt's sexuality and are bros and keep it a secret for him
> 
> \- i have done SO MUCH research about the 1940s that my brain has melted, so i'm gonna go for it right now and say that anything that isn't historically accurate gets the "Superheroes, y'all" excuse and if u could please ignore it, thanks,
> 
> \- the jewish prayer for the departed was googled; nana's "fistful by fistful" line at the beginning was a paraphrased quote from my own great-grandmother
> 
> \- anyways, this has been fun! a whole summer's worth, and I really hope you've enjoyed.


End file.
